US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DISTRICT #5

NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot. All of my research sources and links for these candidates are presented after and below the candidate profiles.

Reason for my Endorsement:

Foxx is well known in these parts. She favors free-market capitalism, strict federal fiscal restraint, very right-of-center conservative social values, and a robust national/border security. She is a strong supporter of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and doesn’t show at debates and town halls because she says they are “just an opportunity for people to yell at their member of Congress.” Hubbard demonstrates working-class progressivism. He supports proactive government intervention in the interest of economic equity, robust social safety nets, and corporate accountability. Huffman interests me, and I looked closely at this campaign. He is anti-establishment and strongly opposes the two-party system. He describes himself as “slightly right,” advocates for shrinking government and is seeking to get 4% of the total vote to send a message. But he is not the most progressive candidate in the race.

VIRGINIA FOXX (Republican)

Virginia Foxx campaign website

Foxx has represented North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House since 2005. Before Congress, she served ten years in the North Carolina Senate and three terms on the Watauga County Board of Education. She previously taught at Appalachian State University, held administrative positions there, and served as president of Mayland Community College. She holds degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill and a doctorate in education from UNC-Greensboro. She currently chairs the powerful House Rules Committee and previously chaired the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Foxx describes herself as a conservative committed to limited government, lower federal spending, religious freedom, opposition to abortion, and strong national defense. After more than two decades in Congress, however, voters have considerably more than campaign language by which to judge her. She has an extensive voting and public-speaking record.

ABORTION

Foxx has long opposed abortion and celebrated the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Her campaign says she supports protecting life “from conception to natural death.” In the current Congress, she is a cosponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which declares constitutional protection for human life beginning at fertilization, and she introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would prohibit federal Title X family-planning grants from going to entities that perform abortions, with specified exceptions.

LGBTQ RIGHTS AND MATTHEW SHEPARD

One of Foxx’s most widely reported congressional remarks came during 2009 House debate over expanding federal hate-crime protections to include crimes motivated by sexual orientation.

Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, had been beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in 1998. With Shepard’s mother in the House gallery, Foxx argued that Shepard had been killed during a robbery rather than because he was gay and said that describing his murder as a hate crime was a “hoax” being used to advance hate-crimes legislation. Foxx subsequently apologized for using the word “hoax,” calling it a poor choice of words and Shepard’s death a tragedy. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law later that year.

Her later voting record remained consistent with opposition to several expansions of federal LGBTQ protections. In 2021 she voted against the Equality Act, which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to federal civil-rights protections, and in 2022 she voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which established federal recognition protections for same-sex and interracial marriages.

THE 2020 ELECTION AND JANUARY 6

After the November 2020 presidential election, Foxx supported an objection to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes when Congress reconvened after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. There is an important distinction in her voting record. Earlier that evening Foxx voted against sustaining the objection to Arizona’s electoral votes. Hours later, she voted for the Pennsylvania objection.

Foxx defended the Pennsylvania vote the following day, saying she believed changes to Pennsylvania election procedures violated state law and that she therefore could not vote “in good conscience” to certify those electors.

TRUMP’S 2025 TAX AND SPENDING LAW

Foxx strongly supported President Trump’s 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and as Rules Committee chair helped bring it to the House floor. She voted for final passage in July 2025. The law extended major provisions of the 2017 tax cuts, added new tax provisions, substantially increased funding for immigration enforcement, border security and defense, and made major changes to Medicaid and SNAP. Foxx described the measure as advancing tax relief, border security and defense while reducing what Republicans characterized as waste, fraud and abuse in federal programs.

The changes were substantial. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the law’s Medicaid provisions would reduce federal spending by about $887 billion over ten years and increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.5 million in 2034. The law also changed SNAP eligibility and shifted some food-assistance costs from the federal government to the states.

EDUCATION AND STUDENT DEBT

Education has been one of Foxx’s principal areas of influence in Congress. As chair of the Education and Workforce Committee and earlier its higher-education subcommittee, she played a significant role in federal higher-education and workforce policy. Foxx has also been a persistent opponent of broad federal student-loan cancellation. She opposed the Biden administration’s SAVE repayment plan and other debt-relief efforts, arguing that they transferred borrowers’ obligations to taxpayers and exceeded executive authority.

One bipartisan accomplishment was the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, a compromise that incorporated elements of Foxx’s SKILLS Act and overhauled federal workforce-development programs.

SOMETHING WORTH WATCHING: In a March 2025 Fox Business interview, Foxx discusses the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul the U.S. Department of Education and explains her own views on the federal government’s role in education.

HURRICANE HELENE AND A VERY LOCAL DISPUTE

After Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina in September 2024, Foxx advocated for federal recovery assistance for the district. In January 2026 she announced nearly $40 million in FEMA Public Assistance grants for communities in the 5th District and said she had pressed FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security for additional recovery funding.

But Helene also brought national attention to a long-running private-road dispute involving Foxx and her neighbors, Glen and Florence Davis. Flooding badly damaged Rime Frost Road near Grandfather Mountain, leaving the Davis family unable to use its normal vehicle route to Highway 105. The News & Observer reported that the Foxxes had locked gates across their property and that Foxx declined to allow the Davises to use a route across Foxx property, citing potential liability. The dispute followed years of litigation between the families over road maintenance.

Foxx disputed significant parts of that account. Her representatives said the alternate route crossed property belonging to others and that Foxx did not have legal authority to grant the Davises access over those properties. They also cited the history of the dispute, including threatening behavior, as relevant to the Foxxes’ safety and liability concerns. Foxx said emergency responders would be allowed through if necessary.

ONE OF 13

One vote from Foxx’s long congressional record stands out simply because of how few members joined her.

In 2010, the House considered a resolution expressing support for the “goals and ideals” of the National School Lunch Program. The measure did not appropriate new money; it recognized the program’s role in providing nutritious, low-cost or free meals to schoolchildren and the relationship between adequate nutrition, health and learning. The resolution passed 403–13. All 248 Democrats who voted supported it. So did 155 Republicans. Virginia Foxx was one of the 13 members who voted no.

SHE’S AWOL

Virginia Foxx has made clear that she doesn’t like traditional town halls. Asked in March 2025 about members of Congress facing angry constituents at town halls, Foxx said she doesn’t hold them because they are “just an opportunity for people to yell at their member of Congress.” Instead, she said constituents who want to talk with her should come to her office and sit down with her.

But some Watauga constituents found that easier said than done.

In 2025, residents of Watauga County went to Foxx’s Boone congressional office during its posted business hours. Video posted by the group shows constituents at the locked office door knocking and attempting to enter without being admitted. Foxx’s official congressional website lists that office at 400 Shadowline Drive and says it is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The group also invited Foxx to participate in a public town hall in Boone. She did not attend.

That doesn’t mean Foxx’s congressional staff provides poor constituent services. Foxx has maintained a Boone constituent-services office for years. The question here is different: how accessible is Foxx herself to constituents who want to question their representative face-to-face?

ROBERT B. LUFFMAN (Libertarian)

Robert Luffman campaign website

Robert Luffman of Ronda in Wilkes County is the Libertarian candidate for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District. This is his first run for political office. Luffman says he has spent about 25 years in transportation, including 14 years as a commercial driver, and has driven more than one million safe miles through the 48 contiguous states and Canada. He continues to work while campaigning and describes himself simply as a “working man.”

Luffman says he had considered running for Congress for more than a decade. Previously registered unaffiliated, Luffman joined the Libertarian Party several years ago in part because North Carolina’s ballot-access requirements make it difficult to run for Congress as an unaffiliated candidate. He says he found the party’s philosophy increasingly suited his own. His campaign slogan is “People before Party.”

A VERY LOW BUDGET CAMPAIGN

Luffman is not pretending that he is running anything resembling a conventional congressional campaign. He says he spent more than $2,000 of his own money on filing and building his website and does not want contributions from supporters, corporations, lobbyists, foreign governments or special interests. His campaign consists largely of word of mouth, social media, questionnaires, podcasts and online appearances.

Luffman sets a modest benchmark for the campaign. If he receives 4 percent of the vote, he says he will consider that a victory because a significant third-party vote can force the two major parties to pay attention to voters they otherwise ignore. “If I win,” he joked, “I’ll probably ask for a recount because I won’t believe it either.”

“SLIGHTLY RIGHT” LIBERTARIAN?

Luffman describes himself as a Libertarian who leans “slightly right.” His political philosophy centers on reducing federal power, shrinking government and protecting individual liberty. He cautions against giving expansive powers to a president or federal agency simply because your own party controls it:– eventually the other party will inherit those same powers. Without naming President Trump in that answer, Luffman warns that “red voters” may be cheering the use of federal law-enforcement power now but asks what happens when control changes hands. He compares his own proposed government cuts to DOGE: “Like DOGE, but a real cut. Don’t start by making government bigger before pretending to make it smaller.”

But Luffman does not agree with the Libertarian Party on everything.

IMMIGRATION

“I break away from the Libertarian party on this issue,” Luffman says. He opposes open borders and says immigration laws should be enforced, but also believes the legal immigration system needs a complete overhaul. He objects to immigrants living and working here for decades without a path to citizenship and to a legal process requiring years and thousands of dollars to navigate. In a September candidate survey, he opposed illegal entry and sanctuary states and cities.

His position in essence combines stronger enforcement with a substantially easier and clearer legal path for immigrants.

GUNS

Asked about federal gun restrictions, Luffman said: “The Second Amendment is the only gun law I personally believe in.” In another candidate survey he put it even more succinctly: “The only gun law I believe in was Ratified in 1791.”

MARIJUANA & CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Luffman supports nationwide marijuana legalization and free expungement of convictions for simple possession and other victimless offenses. He says he does not use marijuana but believes its medical benefits outweigh its harms, particularly for some veterans, and argues that pharmaceutical and alcohol-industry lobbying has helped preserve federal prohibition. He also supports ending private prisons and says he wou.ld like to end lobbying altogether.

TAXES, SPENDING AND THE IRS

Luffman proposes dramatically reducing the federal government, with the goal of eliminating the individual income tax and the IRS within two years.

The Congressional Budget Office projects about $2.7 trillion in individual income-tax revenue in 2026, roughly half of all federal revenue, while total federal spending is projected at about $7.4 trillion. Luffman has not provided a detailed budget showing what he would eliminate or how that lost revenue would be replaced.

Asked about fiscal responsibility,Luffman’s first answer is emphatic: “LINE ITEM VETO!” But there’s a constitutional problem. Congress enacted a federal line-item veto in 1996, and in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down in Clinton v. City of New York. Giving a president the power to cancel individual spending provisions after signing a bill into law, the Court held, violates the Constitution’s requirements for enacting federal laws.

Luffman has also discussed allowing Americans to opt out of what he calls “SSI” and invest the money themselves. From his reference to investment returns and retirement accounts, he appears to mean the Social Security retirement system rather than Supplemental Security Income, which “SSI” normally means. The two programs are quite different, so I can’t say precisely what he wants Americans to be allowed to opt out of.

HEALTH CARE

Luffman and his wife obtain health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. He says his pre-ACA Blue Cross policy provided better coverage at a lower price. But Luffman acknowledges that he does not currently have a replacement proposal. He generally favors greater consumer choice and competition in health care. “I currently have no proposal for a different system,” he says, adding that he is willing to listen to ideas.

ABORTION

Luffman says that when he was 25, a woman with whom he was involved became pregnant. He wanted the child; she chose an abortion. He nevertheless says the decision was hers to make. He believes federally funded health coverage should pay for abortion when a pregnancy threatens a woman’s health and in cases involving rape or incest. He believes elective abortions should be paid for by the individual rather than the government.

TERM LIMITS

Luffman supports a constitutional amendment limiting House members to five terms, or ten years, and senators to two terms, or twelve years. He says that if elected he would voluntarily limit himself to five House terms even without the amendment.

FOREIGN POLICY

Luffman takes a generally non-interventionist approach. He argues that the United States should concentrate more heavily on problems at home, opposes what he calls “endless wars” and questions American spending on the defense of other nations. As far as I can tell, however, he has not provided detailed public positions on Ukraine, Gaza or NATO.

VETERANS

Luffman supports allowing veterans greater freedom to use doctors outside the VA system, pointing particularly to rural veterans who may have to drive more than an hour to see an assigned provider. His support for marijuana legalization also includes making cannabis available to veterans who find it useful as an alternative to other medications or alcohol.

INFRASTRUCTURE & HELENE

After decades of commercial driving, Luffman argues that American highways and bridges are in poor condition despite the taxes intended to support them and favors greater infrastructure investment. Hurricane Helene is personal for Luffman, who says he watched friends and neighbors suffer after the September 2024 storm. He asks why North Carolina’s Democratic attorney general had to sue the Trump administration over disaster-related funding while the president, the district’s House member, and both U.S. senators were Republicans.

The underlying lawsuits are real, but Luffman compresses several different funding disputes into one.

Attorney General Jeff Jackson has successfully challenged the Trump administration over federal emergency and disaster-related money, including FEMA disaster-mitigation funding, emergency-management grants used for disaster response, and AmeriCorps funding directly supporting western North Carolina’s Helene recovery. But those were different programs and different legal disputes. They cannot all accurately be described simply as FEMA withholding “Helene funds.”

ONE THING HE GETS WRONG

In discussing concentrated executive power, Luffman says ATF, NSA, FBI, CIA, BIA, CBP and ICE are all controlled by the Department of Homeland Security.

They are not.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection are part of Homeland Security; the FBI and ATF are part of Justice. NSA is part of the Department of Defense. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is part of Interior; and the CIA is an independent agency. His larger argument is about federal power regardless of which party controls the executive branch. You can decide what you think of that argument, but his description of the agencies is factually incorrect.

WHAT INTERESTS ME

Luffman is running a low-budget campaign, has no previous elected experience and readily acknowledges the obstacles facing a third-party candidate in the 5th District. But that also means voters get a candidate who sometimes simply says what he thinks without much apparent concern for whether it has been tested by a political consultant. Sometimes that produces unusually candid answers. Sometimes it produces proposals that have not yet been worked through in detail. And occasionally it produces factual errors.

Luffman says his purpose in running is larger than winning a seat: he wants voters dissatisfied with both major parties to have somewhere else to go. “People are greater than parties,” he says.

CHUCK HUBBARD  (Democrat)

Chuck Hubbard campaign website

A Wilkes County native, Hubbard started working at the Wilkes Journal-Patriot, the newspaper founded by his grandfather, when he was eight years old. He began reporting for the paper at 16 and returned after graduating from Wofford College, eventually spending about 40 years there as a reporter, editor and publisher.

THE NEWSPAPERMAN BECOMES THE CANDIDATE

Hubbard’s campaign biography makes a point of saying that during his newspaper career he investigated and presented facts without allowing his own political beliefs to influence his reporting. Politics requires something quite different. A reporter is supposed to stand outside the story. A candidate for Congress is asking voters to put him squarely in the middle of it.

What happens when somebody who spent forty years telling other people’s stories decides he wants the power to change the story himself?

In Hubbard’s case, he has become increasingly willing to tell you exactly what he thinks.He says Congress pays too much attention to corporations and wealthy people and not enough to people who work for a living. He wants a higher minimum wage, a tax system that puts more of the burden on wealthy people and corporations, stronger support for organized labor, protection for Social Security and Medicare, greater federal support for public education, a government health-insurance option, federal protection of abortion rights and less corporate money in politics.

There is a common thread running through much of it.

THE WORKING MAN

Ask Hubbard for his top priority in Congress and he doesn’t start with Donald Trump, Virginia Foxx, abortion, immigration or even public education.

“My top priority is to represent working class people,” he told the News & Observer.

That’s not new campaign language. Hubbard was talking about working families, livable wages, affordable housing, small businesses and public education during his 2024 congressional campaign as well. He argues that people who work hard should be able to afford housing, food, child care, health care and utilities and still have some reasonable chance of getting ahead.

He supports raising the federal minimum wage and says the tax burden should shift more heavily toward wealthy people and corporations. He also argues that small businesses are increasingly unable to compete against large corporations. At an Appalachian State candidate forum during the Democratic primary, Hubbard described himself as strongly pro-labor, noting North Carolina’s low union membership and arguing that union wages are generally living wages.

Whether you agree with his proposed solutions or not, “working people” isn’t something Hubbard sprinkles into speeches. It’s probably the clearest organizing principle in his politics.

HEALTH CARE

Hubbard supports creating a government health-insurance option alongside the existing health-care system. He has said the public option should operate on a sliding scale based on ability to pay and believes the federal government should negotiate medical and pharmaceutical prices.

He also connects health care to a particularly rural problem: access. His current platform says nobody should face enormous medical bills and that every community should have a hospital within a reasonable drive. But Hubbard is considerably more specific about protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security than he is about their long-term financing. He repeatedly promises to protect the programs, but I have not found a detailed proposal from him explaining how he would address Medicare or Social Security’s long-term financial challenges.

ABORTION

Hubbard is unequivocally pro-choice. He says abortion is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor and believes Congress should codify abortion rights nationally. At an Appalachian State forum he described himself as “completely pro-choice” and said he was determined to codify Roe v. Wade. This issue is also personal for Hubbard. He has spoken publicly about one of his daughters and her wife and his concern about the loss of reproductive rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

IMMIGRATION & ICE

Hubbard supports secure borders but also wants a substantially different approach to immigrants already living in the United States without legal status. He says undocumented immigrants should have a humane way to seek legal status and eventually citizenship without first being required to leave the country.

His position on ICE is considerably more aggressive. During the Democratic primary Hubbard argued that ICE should be dismantled and either replaced or rebuilt under new rules and congressional oversight. He criticized the agency’s funding and tactics and described the current organization as functioning too much like a presidential police force. He does not advocate simply abandoning immigration enforcement. His position combines border enforcement with restructuring federal immigration enforcement and creating a path to legal status for people already here.

EDUCATION

Education has been one of Hubbard’s consistent issues through several campaigns. He argues that most education policy properly belongs at the state and local level but says the federal government should provide stronger support for public schools, teachers, school infrastructure, community colleges, trade schools and universities.

Hubbard’s economic argument shows up here too. Education, job training and trade schools are, in his view, part of creating a workforce capable of earning a living rather than simply another government program.

MONEY IN POLITICS

Hubbard says corporations and special interests have too much influence over Congress. He wants Citizens United overturned, wants to reduce the influence of corporate PACs in elections and supports banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks while serving in office.

His own campaign finances are worth looking at in that context. Through June 30, Hubbard reported about $394,600 in contributions. More than $391,000 came from individuals. Only $3,000 came from a party committee and $350 from other political committees. Nearly $182,000 of his individual contributions were unitemized, meaning the campaign was not required to disclose those contributors individually under federal reporting rules.

That doesn’t tell us who every donor is or whether individual donors are necessarily “working class.” But it does mean Hubbard’s campaign has so far been financed overwhelmingly by individuals rather than party or other political committees. In this case, at least, the way he raises money generally resembles the way he talks about politics.

CORRUPTION

Hubbard’s definition of corruption extends beyond campaign contributions. He wants members of Congress prohibited from trading stocks and says an independent investigation should examine the Epstein files and hold anyone involved in criminal conduct accountable. He has also criticized both parties for failing to police themselves aggressively enough.

During the Democratic primary, Hubbard said integrity was fundamental because voters need to be able to believe what a candidate tells them. But he also argued that Democrats have been too passive in confronting Republicans. He supports Hakeem Jeffries as House Democratic leader but has been much more critical of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, saying during the primary campaign that Schumer should step down.

FOREIGN POLICY

Hubbard’s foreign-policy positions are more nuanced than much of his domestic platform. He argues that Congress must reclaim its constitutional role in decisions involving military action and opposes using the U.S. military as a substitute for civilian law enforcement against foreign leaders. On Ukraine, Hubbard supports continued American military, economic and intelligence assistance to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, while opposing direct American combat involvement.

He says the United States should use diplomacy and its international alliances to seek an end to both the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. On Israel and Palestine, he says American policy must balance the strategic alliance with Israel against the humanitarian needs of Palestinians.

His general position is not isolationist. He supports continued American engagement abroad but puts considerably more emphasis on congressional authorization and diplomacy than on unilateral presidential military action.

HURRICANE HELENE

Hubbard says Congress should continue pushing for promised Helene recovery money and wants much greater transparency from both FEMA and Congress about how much recovery funding has been authorized, where it has gone and how much has actually reached people and businesses on the ground. For Hubbard, Helene also becomes part of his larger criticism of Virginia Foxx. He argues that the district’s representative should be actively fighting for promised recovery funding and demanding accountability for where the money goes.

A CAMPAIGN FINALLY FINDING ITS VOICE?

Hubbard is a noticeably different candidate from the man who first ran for the North Carolina House in 2024.This is his second campaign for this seat. He knocks doors, holds town halls and has built a substantially larger campaign operation than the one he began with. He is also considerably less hesitant about taking strong positions.

That doesn’t necessarily mean every position is fully developed. Hubbard can be quite specific about abortion, labor, immigration enforcement and the role of government in health care while offering considerably less detail about how some expensive federal programs would be financed over the long term. And some of his campaign’s increasingly aggressive political language sounds quite different from the careful newspaperman who spent decades trying to keep himself out of the story.

But perhaps that’s the point. Chuck Hubbard isn’t a reporter anymore. He’s asking voters to let him help write what happens next.

SOURCES/LINKS for Virginia Foxx

Background / Congressional Record

Abortion

LGBTQ Rights / Matthew Shepard

2020 Election / January 6

2025 Tax and Spending Law

Education / Student Debt

Hurricane Helene / Rime Frost Road

National School Lunch Program

Constituent Access

SOURCES/LINKS for Robert B. Luffman

Background / Campaign / Candidate Positions

Candidate Surveys

Federal Budget / Line-Item Veto

Hurricane Helene / Federal Funding

Federal Agencies

SOURCES/LINKS for Chuck Hubbard

Biography / Journalism

Working Families / Economy / Education / Health Care / Abortion / Corruption / Helene

Labor / Immigration & ICE / Reproductive Rights / Democratic Leadership

Foreign Policy

Campaign Finance